There has been no prior coverage of the plot by the military of President Bashar al-Assad to dig up the mass cemetery in Qutayfah and build a massive second mass grave in the desert near the village of Dhumair. News Channel analyzed hundreds of satellite photos of both grave sites taken over a number of years, reviewed documents created by officials involved, and spoke with 13 people with firsthand knowledge of the two-year effort to move the bodies in order to pinpoint the location of the Dhumair grave site and provide details about the extensive operation. “Operation Move Earth” was the name of the 2019–2021 operation that moved bodies from Qutayfah to a different secret location dozens of kilometers away.
According to the witnesses, the operation’s goal was to conceal the atrocities committed by the Assad regime and aid in repairing its reputation. Comparing the Mass Grave Sites News Channel discovered 16 burial trenches in Qutayfah, which ranged in length from about 15 meters to 160 meters. There were at least 34 trenches at Dhumair, with lengths varying from roughly 20 to 125 meters. On Tuesday, News Channel shared the investigation’s results with President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s administration. Questions for this report were not immediately answered by the authorities. To lessen the possibility that trespassers will alter the burial, the news organization is not disclosing the exact location of the site here.
The tale of how the Assad government carried out the covert operation and how journalists discovered the plot will be documented in a future News Channnel special report. According to News Channel, the grave in the Dhumair desert is one of the largest constructed during the Syrian civil war, with at least 34 trenches that are 2 kilometers long. Tens of thousands of people might be buried there, according to witness reports and the new site’s size. Around 2012, at the start of the civil war, Assad’s regime started burying the dead near Qutayfah. According to witnesses, the mass grave had the remains of troops and inmates who perished in the dictator’s military hospitals and jails.
The existence of Qutayfah and its geographical location on the outskirts of Damascus were made public in 2014 by a Syrian human rights activist who gave local media access to photographs of the grave. A few years later, via court testimony and other media accounts, its exact location was revealed. According to the witnesses participated in the operation, six to eight trucks carrying soil and human remains moved from Qutayfah to the Dhumair desert site for four nights almost every week from February 2019 to April 2021. There was no documentation identifying Operation Move Earth or mass graves in general, and News Channel was unable to verify whether dead from other places also arrived at the secret location.
Two truck drivers, three mechanics, a bulldozer operator, and a former officer from Assad’s elite Republican Guard who had been involved from the beginning of the transfer all remembered the stink with vivid clarity. We were unable to get in touch with former President Assad, who is currently in Russia, or a number of military leaders who witnesses said were crucial to the operation. Assad and many of his associates left the country after the demise of the dictatorship late last year. According to the former Republican Guard officer, the plan to relocate thousands of dead was conceived in late 2018, as Assad was on the brink of winning the civil war in Syria.
After years of sanctions and accusations of cruelty, the dictator hoped to restore international recognition, according to the officer. Assad was accused at the time of holding thousands of Syrians in detention. However, neither international agencies nor independent Syrian groups were allowed access to the mass graves or the prisons. According to military authorities, the purpose of the transfer was to remove the Qutayfah mass grave and conceal evidence of mass murders, two truckers and the officer told News Channel. All 16 of the trenches in Qutayfah that News Channel had photographed were empty by the time Assad was overthrown.
According to Syrian rights organizations, over 160,000 people vanished into the enormous security infrastructure of the overthrown dictator and are thought to be interred in the hundreds of mass graves he established. One of Syria’s most agonizing faultlines would be eased if organized excavation and DNA analysis were used to determine what happened to them. However, Syria lacks resources, so even well-known mass graves remain mostly unexcavated and unprotected. Furthermore, despite repeated requests from the families of the missing, the country’s new leaders—who deposed Assad in December—have not made any records regarding the people interred there public. According to Syrian Minister of Emergency and Disaster Management Raed al-Saleh, the effort is hampered by the sheer volume of casualties and the requirement to reconstruct the legal system.
There is an urgent need to train experts in forensic medicine and DNA testing, according to Syria’s new National Commission for Missing People, which also announced plans to establish a DNA bank and a centralized digital platform for families of the missing. In late August, al-Saleh told the semi-official Syrian news site al-Watan, “As long as there are mothers waiting to find the graves of their sons, wives waiting to find the graves of their husbands, and children waiting to find the graves of their fathers, there is a bleeding wound.”
A careless movement of bodies like the one from Qutayfah to Dhumair, according to Mohamed Al Abdallah, chairman of the Syria Justice and Accountability Center, a Syrian organization that tries to track down the missing and look into war crimes, is devastating for bereaved families. After hearing the Newspaper findings, Al Abdallah stated, “It will be very difficult to piece these bodies together so that complete remains can be returned to families.” He called the new government’s creation of the commission for missing persons a move in the right direction. “It still lacks the resources and the experts, but it has political support,” he stated. Speaking up during the covert operation meant definite death, according to drivers, mechanics, and other transfer participants.
One driver declared, “No one would disobey the orders.” “You could get into the holes yourself.”
